After a suitable amount of time faffing with the van and missing all the holiday traffic we finally said goodbye to the house for 3 months and got on the road.
First stop: Bristol! We stopped with Hellie, Rob and Daisy for a day of toddler chaos before Hellie and Daisy left (for a cycle race obvs) and we took Rob to the pub for a cheeky pint. The next morning we managed to squeeze in a pre 9am park visit to see Kamilla, Rich, Oskar and Hannah.
Continuing to not quite head in the direction of Dover, we continued south to Devon. 1st stop, Eddie met Harry, to play fantastically and show off our van home whilst the grown ups chatted. Harry’s 3 cousins also rocked up later on providing even more kiddie entertainment for less adult effort. Eeveryone’s a winner!
After a day of kiddie playing, we fancied a beer. Devon is best placed for this, as we went to the town of Beer! The cliff top out to Brandscombe and lower cliff return walk was an exciting 6km (including 17 tree tunnels as Eddie excitedly told anyone we saw!) that gave Sam his first taste of backpack life, and Edster the opportunity to earn ice-cream by walking far. Ideal walk for a warm but not sunny day. For the evenings beer in Beer, we were joined by Cam for dinner in a sea view beer garden. Great to see him in his new home county.
We found a place in Seaton to kip for the night which just so happened to be across the river from a heritage tramway! Of course no other activity could possibly start the next day. We managed to get 4 different trams up and down the line visiting a little town at the end, a picnic site by the river and most importantly a pub, before tramming back to Seaton for a quick ice cream and paddle then a bedtime drive to Southampton.
We stayed the first night with Theresa and Chris, completing the longest sleepy Eddie transfer yet on the walk to her flat on the seafront. In the morning we got a bus, ferry and the floating bridge to West Cowes to soak in the Cowes week atmosphere and sample food and drink from as many of the stalls as possible. We left Theresa on the island to race the next day and headed back on our route of exciting modes of transport back to her flat to harass Chris for another night. Planning on a few hours for Adam to faff with some van wiring we decided to head to a park (with miniature trains of course) where after the obligatory train ride Cat, Eddie & baby Sam went for a bike ride to the playpark while Adam managed to fix everything like the wonderful human he is. We then headed for an incredible Turkish mezze lunch at EVI in Eastleigh with bonus free babysitting while we ate (thanks Mesh!), after which we headed to their house to see Andy and Rowan for the evening for more kiddie chaos as cousin Aliye was staying too!
The next day we got to have bonus Andy and Rowan time as she couldnt go to nursery due to needing to start some antibiotics, so we hit the Solent Air museum before lunch with ocean views and an afternoon wandering around Winchester and sampling some magnificent chocolate gelato.
That evening we headed on to Brighton to camp up by the seafront, and go for a walk with a surprisingly awake Eddie along the seawall as the sun set. We met Katrine the following morning for a lovely day of swimming in the sea, lunch and splash park, followed by more swimming. Living the Brighton life!
The next day was amazing… we’d accidentally managed to coincide our trip with Brighton pride! We marched along the seafront, trying (unsuccessfully!) To catch up with the floats at the front, before finding a nice spot where we could all see to soak up the general excitement, happiness and show of colours that was the first ever Pride we’d been to. Eddie cracked open an apple juice, we opened our ‘grown up apple juice’ and we all watched the rainbow floats go dancing, driving, drumming and flouncing their way by. We somehow managed to find Katrine, Tom and Magnus and Becca and Sinead in the chaos and found an excellent pub slightly off the beaten track with a cracking beer selection before heading back to Trino & Tom’s place for a BBQ.
Sunday we hopped on a train to London to see Mikey and Nat for Brunch, then hit a playpark followed by a pub with Mikey while Nat went to work. Finding ourselves with a little spare time as evening came we crossed London by tube to Eddie’s great excitement to see Jack, Becky and Suzie, who showed us around the new house and more importantly Suzie’s toys, Eddie and Sizie bouncing off the walls once fuelled up by spaghetti bol just in time for us to leave for another exciting underground and train journey back to Brighton… such an exciting day that Eddie fell asleep on the train and Adam smashed the previous sleepy transfer record by carrying him off the Brighton train, onto another train to Hove, and the 10 min walk back to the van from there without him really walking up!
After having realised the leisure batteries we knackered, Adam had an exciting Monday morning in a Halfords car park replacing them. Then it was finally time to leave the country, having finally run out of ideas for other friends on the south coast to harass!
Parenting Responsibly 